What we seek is a practical or actionable statement of a public issue, based on which expenditures can be made, personnel deployed, and procedures developed that reduce or eliminate the undesirable state of affairs without undue harmful consequences for related activities. In principle, policies can be defined and actions taken that do not cause unintended consequences. In prac tice, unintended consequences need to be anticipated, if possible, through prior analysis of comparative lessons from policy implementation under similar conditions. This should include review of how efficiently administrative mechanisms have deployed resources. Again, this refers to the institutional issue in policy analysis: Management needs the flexibility to change course if a problem has been misdefined.